Increase Vacation Rental Bookings With Channel Management Software

“The benefits of being aggressive in this environment are many. Vacation rental managers who choose to add channel partners increase their potential bookings exponentially for each partner added. As the vacation rental industry stands poised on the brink of investment-fueled innovation, partnering becomes even more attractive than it has been heretofore.”

Manage Your Vacationrental.com Listings

Established in 1997, has since become part of the HomeAway family recently. As part of HomeAway, Vacationrentals.com offers over 1 million listings from Florida beach houses to European villas. Partnering with Vacationrentals.com thus extends your marketing efforts, making your vacation rental property accessible to a huge, truly global audience.

Listing with Vacationrentals.com expands your marketing reach.

The Cost of Channel Partnerships

According to VRMintel’s “Third Party Distribution Channels: The Changing Landscape of Third Party Booking Channels”, there are changes afoot in the pricing of such partnerships. The article notes: “As business models transition and these online marketplaces evolve, investors almost unanimously believe vacation rental owners and managers are willing to spend 10-15 percent to secure a booking. As a result, the industry can expect to see distribution costs creep upward over the next few years.

Today’s property managers are faced with the decision to:

Absorb the third party fees

Pass the fees on to the owner

Pass the fees on to the guests by raising prices on channels.”

How will you deal with such a decision? In order to decide what sort of investment to make in a channel partnership, it is important to calculate acquisition costs for a new customer. The VRMintel article goes on to quote Steve Milo, Founder and Managing Director at Vacation Rental Pros, who offers this advice:

“It is also important to determine your true cost of using the channels. Some channels are easy to work with while others require an enormous amount of time and manual effort.”

Making the Most of a Channel Partnership

When counting the cost of acquiring bookings through channel partners, it is important to remember that today’s travelers are turning more and more to online booking sites like Vacationrentals.com to secure their bookings. While it may be true that the cost of using third party portals is likely to continue to increase, the reality is that, for many vacation rental property management companies, it is the third party portals that yield the most bookings.

What can you do to ensure that your partnerships are mutually profitable? You can increase your profitability by being efficient and selective in the channel partners with whom you choose to list your properties.

Fortunately, Kigo has a tool that helps you accomplish that. While vacation rental booking and listing sites will continue to evolve, our channel management software will help you manage your listings, avoid double bookings, and, when managed properly, boost your revenue. This makes both you and your rental property owners happy.